Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.
Girlhood (Céline Sciamma)
With Girlhood, writer-director Céline Sciamma (Tomboy, Water Lilies) deepens her preoccupation with coming-of-age stories focusing on strong, young female leads. Her characters are always outsiders looking to fit in, and each have intense love interests. In her latest, she explores a poor, minority community in France through a drama that could easily prove maudlin and over-the-top. Instead, she used non-actors to perform a script and complement direction that are always restrained and thoughtful. – Will M. (full review)
Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
If there is a very loose thread connecting contemporary Russian cinema to its artistic heritage, it is that its best filmmakers still exude a desire to produce art on the grandest of scales. The great Czarist-then-Soviet-then-Thaw State has amalgamated a collection of artists known, in some circles, solely for their grand scale: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov, with their intense emotional overtures that turn simple stories into mass-size tragedies; the overtures of Tchaikovsky, with their use of bellowing brass and percussion; and Kadinsky’s extreme use of space in his abstractness. Of course, there is its cinema: Eisenstein’s lightning-like editing, Tarkovsky’s profound stillness, Sokurov’s investigation of power — and, now, Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s intensely operatic examination of a land dispute escalated to epic proportions in Leviathan. – Peter L. (full review)
Limelight (Charles Chaplin)
Charlie Chaplin’s masterful drama about the twilight of a former vaudeville star is among the writer-director’s most touching films. Chaplin plays Calvero, a once beloved musical-comedy performer, now a washed-up alcoholic who lives in a small London flat. A glimmer of hope arrives when he meets a beautiful but melancholy ballerina (Claire Bloom) who lives downstairs. An elegant mix of the comic and the tragic, this poignant movie also features Buster Keaton in an extended cameo, marking the only time the two silent comedy icons appeared in a film together. Made at a time when Chaplin was under attack by the American press and far right, Limelight was scarcely distributed in the United States upon its initial release, but it is now considered one of his essential and most personal works. – Criterion.com
Also Arriving This Week
American Sniper (review)
Cymbeline (review)
Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (review)
The Rose
Recommended Deals of the Week
(Note: new additions are in red)
The American (Blu-ray) – $6.75
Amelie (Blu-ray) – $6.69
Anna Karenina (Blu-ray) – $12.02
Before Midnight (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Beginners (Blu-ray) – $9.10
Black Swan (Blu-ray) – $7.00
The Bling Ring (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Bronson (Blu-ray) – $10.91
The Brothers Bloom (Blu-ray) – $7.67
Burn After Reading (Blu-ray) – $8.47
The Cabin in the Woods (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Casino (Blu-ray) – $8.92
Captain Phillips (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Cloverfield (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Collateral (Blu-ray) – $5.99
Do the Right Thing (Blu-ray) – $9.46
Drive (Blu-ray) – $7.88
The Fly (Blu-ray) – $6.99
Gangs of New York (Blu-ray) – $7.50
Goodfellas (Blu-ray) – $8.35
Good Will Hunting (Blu-ray) – $7.50
The Grandmaster (Blu-ray) – $7.99
The Grey (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Haywire (Blu-ray) – $7.64
Hot Fuzz (Blu-ray) – $8.73
The Illusionist (Blu-ray) – $9.99
The Immigrant (Blu-ray) – $14.99
Inglorious Basterds (Blu-ray) – $8.73
Jackie Brown (Blu-ray) – $5.00
Jane Eyre (Blu-ray) – $7.95
Killing Them Softly (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Kingdom of Heaven (Blu-ray) – $9.96
L.A. Confidential (Blu-ray) – $8.54
The Lady From Shanghai (Blu-ray) – $8.49
Looper (Blu-ray) – $9.09
Lost In Translation (Blu-ray) – $8.73
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Blu-ray) – $6.49
Margaret (Blu-ray) – $9.49
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Blu-ray) – $7.40
Michael Clayton (Blu-ray) – $5.00
Never Let Me Go (Blu-ray) – $6.20
No Country For Old Men (Blu-ray) – $4.96
Observe & Report (Blu-ray) – $7.49
Office Space (Blu-ray) – $6.96
Pariah (Blu-ray) – $6.13
Persepolis (Blu-ray) – $6.39
Prisoners (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Public Enemies (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Pulp Fiction (Blu-ray) – $7.00
Reality Bites (Blu-ray) – $8.49
The Secret In Their Eyes (Blu-ray) – $6.70
A Serious Man (Blu-ray) – $9.94
Seven (Blu-ray) – $7.00
Seven Psychopaths (Blu-ray) – $7.99
Shutter Island (Blu-ray) – $6.93
A Single Man (Blu-ray) – $6.99
The Social Network (Blu-ray) – $9.96
The Spectacular Now (Blu-ray) – $7.88
Spring Breakers (Blu-ray) – $9.96
Synecdoche, NY (Blu-ray) – $6.43
There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) – $7.88
The Tree of Life (Blu-ray) – $6.81
The Truman Show (Blu-ray) – $7.99
True Grit (Blu-ray) – $7.88
This is the End (Blu-ray) – $9.99
Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery (Blu-ray) – $74.99
Vanilla Sky (Blu-ray pre-order) – $8.34
Waltz with Bashir (Blu-ray) – $9.10
We Own the Night (Blu-ray) – $9.13
Where the Wild Things Are (Blu-ray) – $6.94
Whiplash (Blu-ray) – $14.99
The Wrestler (Blu-ray) – $6.73
Zero Dark Thirty (Blu-ray) – $9.09
What are you picking up this week?